The immediate public result of his brothers’ secret marriages was the Royal Marriages Act, passed later in 1772, which gave the king control of the marriage choices of his brothers and sisters and children until they were twenty-five years old. The effect was to make the king more than ever fearful in private of the baleful influence of the world on his children, even though the Prince of Wales was then only nine years old.
George III decided that his eldest son needed a more rigorous and disciplined way of living if he was to be able to arm himself against the worldly temptations that had brought such disgrace to the family and the nation. So, in 1773, the congenial family life that the prince had enjoyed came abruptly to an end. George and his younger brother Frederick were removed from the rest of the royal family and set up in Kew Palace under the eye of a governor, Lord Holdernesse, and several tutors. Hugs and kisses were withdrawn. For the next seven years, the two princes were subjected to a routine of unvaried scholarly discipline, enforced by beatings if they were lazy or untruthful. Their governors and tutors changed over the years, but not the timetable of their days, which consisted of hours of instruction in religion, morals, government and law, interspersed with modern and ancient languages and a few more recent texts. The only British writers the princes studied were Shakespeare, Milton and Pope. For exercise the princes rode out together or with the king, and they were encouraged to dig the earth and grow vegetables and crops, as Rousseau prescribed.
Although the prince later impressed visitors with his literary knowledge, and was good at recycling the learning of his youth, his fear of being alone prevented him from being a serious reader, at least until his later years, when infirmity often confined him indoors and he took to reading in bed. In his youth, he was much better suited to music, by talent and temperament, becoming a good cello player and proficient at the piano. Playing and listening to music offered and brought conviviality and, later, when he had developed a taste for popular songs, fun. He was a good mimic and picked up a melody with ease.
The princes were permitted few other pastimes in their seclusion at Kew. Frequent letters from the king urging study, religious devotion and duty to him as their father and king can only have dampened their spirits, especially when, during difficult political times, George III seemed to demand that his own burdens be lightened by his sons’ demonstrating good behaviour. ‘I cannot conclude,’ the king wrote in 1778, soon after the French had officially entered the American Revolutionary War, ‘without just adding that I know very well I have a difficult time to steer the helm, but the confidence I place in Divine Providence, the attachment I have for this my native country, and the love I bear my children, are insentatives [incentives] sufficient to make me strain every nerf to do my duty … Act uprightly and shew the anxious care I have had of you has not been misspent.’10
From the very beginning, George chafed against the king’s demands and restrictions. He resented the emotional weight his father placed on him, the endless hours of schoolwork, the infantilizing clothes he was forced to wear, and the lack of diversion. None the less, whenever he met outsiders, especially in Frederick’s company, they were invariably charmed by him and compared him favourably to his younger brother. The Prince of Wales, wrote one visitor, was ‘not so handsome as his brother, but his countenance was of a sweetness and intelligence quite irresistible. He had an elegant person, engaging and distinguished manners, added to an affectionate disposition and the cheerfulness of youth. In accomplishments the brothers were unequal, as well as in acquired knowledge, the scale turning always in favour of the Prince of Wales.’11
The prince himself enthusiastically seconded this good opinion. At seventeen, he dashed off a paean of self-praise to one of his sisters’ attendants, describing himself in the third person. ‘His sentiments & thoughts are open and generous,’ he wrote, ‘above doing anything that is mean … grateful and friendly to excess where he finds a real friend. His heart is good & tender if it is allowed to show its emotions.’ He admitted to vices ‘or rather let us call them weaknesses’, and to being ‘rather too fond of Wine and Women’. He acknowledged that he was ‘too subject to be in a passion’; but since ‘he never bears malice or rancour in his heart’, his quick temper was forgivable.12
Partly as a result of this surround sound of approbation, which stood in such contrast to his own memories of a lonely adolescence and a costive and cold mother, George III gradually became envious of his gregarious, easy, unzipped and emotionally entitled son. It was impossible for the king to admit to such a feeling, however: the idea of himself as an honest, straightforward and honourable man was central to his self-image. So his envy came out as disapproval and disdain, sentiments that the prince, equally wedded to his idea of himself as generous and kind, returned. It was an unresolvable relationship on both sides, and both men were the poorer for it. George III took refuge in self-righteous hurt, the prince in high living and indulgence.
It wasn’t long before commentators and cartoonists cheerfully echoed this definition by contrasts, making it all the more difficult for either to change himself or his relationship with the other. Cartoonists routinely portrayed the king as skinny and mean, a simply dressed countryman, Farmer George, who ate soup or a single boiled egg for supper, sitting opposite his scrawny queen. The Prince of Wales was shown as an unbuttoned voluptuary dedicated to wine, women, loose company, extravagance and any available forms of fashionable excess.
In 1780, when the prince was eighteen, the king gave permission for him to set up his own establishment, as was customary, though while the prince now had his own staff, he did not yet have his own household. New apartments were prepared for him, but they were right under the king’s eye, both at Buckingham House and at Windsor. As soon as the Prince of Wales had moved into this new establishment, his younger brother Prince Frederick was unceremoniously despatched to Hanover to complete his military education. His removal left George bereft of his only childhood companion and dangerously alone. From this point on, the prince fixed himself even more resolutely against his father, and so the baleful Hanoverian pattern of enmity between monarch and heir was set in motion again. George III took every opportunity to denigrate his son, writing with a self-serving combination of blame and hurt just two days after his son’s eighteenth birthday: ‘Your own good sense must make you feel that you have not made that progress in your studies which, from the ability and assiduity of those placed for that purpose about you, I might have had reason to expect.’ The king ‘hates me’, the prince later told his friend James Harris, adding: ‘he always did, from seven years old’.13
In the early 1780s, as he approached his majority, the prince’s character and form began to assume their mature contours. He was charming, but unreliable; often in high spirits, but as often histrionic, particularly when he did not get his own way. He could be gracious, was naturally socially adroit and skilled at putting visitors at their ease. His instincts were always on the side of gentleness. He was kindly to children and to his sisters, who were growing up miserably sequestered at Kew and, later, Windsor; he was unafraid of sentimentality and hated cruelty towards animals. When he was king, he shrank at any discussion of the execution of criminals, which he had to approve, and always preferred leniency. ‘It not unfrequently happens that a culprit escapes owing to the scruples of the King,’ an observer noted.14
Yet all these winning qualities were offset by a reluctance to perform any tasks that were uncongenial. Conditioned by entitlement on one side and by a lack of true affection on the other, his life was uneasy and performative. He was very ready to forget the rank of people he met, a habit described by contemporaries as ‘condescension’ or ‘easy manners’, but they were required always to remember his. In the same way, he was fond of practical jokes and loved to mimic others, but never forgave anyone who teased him in return, especially about his weight, which began to increase rapidly in his twenties.
The public role of the Prince of Wales was ill-defined.
George III had inherited the throne from his grandfather when he was twenty-two and had never had to live as an adult in the shadow of his father. Yet this time round, the Prince of Wales could reasonably expect to inhabit his role for decades. When George was eighteen, his father the king was only forty-two. The question then was, what to do?
The role of Prince of Wales demanded above all patience, discretion and duty, to none of which George was naturally inclined. An old friend, Lady Holland, summed up the dilemma in which his character was caught. There was ‘more good in him than falls to the lot of most Princes’, she wrote, and ‘had he not been one, he would, I am persuaded, have been a most amiable man’.15
In August 1783, the Prince of Wales attained his majority. Although he had no official duties, he was now in a very public way his father’s heir and George III expected him to act with the decorum and ceremony his position demanded. Unfortunately for the king, the prince now also acquired a household and full establishment of his own, along with a Civil List income that, after much protest from the king, was fixed at £50,000 a year. To this burden on the taxpayers was added £12,000 a year from the Duchy of Cornwall, which by tradition came to the Prince of Wales, and a supposedly one-off capital sum of £60,000 that was provided directly by Parliament. For a residence, the prince was given use of Carlton House on the southern side of Pall Mall, which had been occupied by the king’s mother, Augusta, until her death a decade earlier. It was an undistinguished house, but sat in a very large, fine garden. Suitably for the prince’s habits, it awaited a complete renovation and revamp.
Everything was now set up for the multiple forms of rebellion that the prince was to play out. With his Civil List and Duchy of Cornwall income, his own household and a large and potentially sumptuous house to call his own, the Prince of Wales was ostensibly independent and free to do as he wished. But his life was circumscribed by both convention and the demands of his father, some of which were enshrined in law.
The Bill of Rights of 1689 and the Act of Settlement of 1701 together defined the relationship of the monarch to Parliament and the terms of succession to the throne. Although they drastically limited the powers of the monarch, kings were left with two active royal prerogatives, the right to declare war and the right to form and dismiss governments. In practice these prerogatives were usually exercised in conjunction with the executive; but their existence allowed the monarch to influence politics from behind the scenes and, occasionally, to act without the knowledge of Parliament. In 1772, for instance, George III, in concert with the prime minister, Lord North, ordered the secret mobilization of a huge fleet of thirty-two ships of the line to force the rescue of his imprisoned sister Queen Caroline Matilda from Kronborg Castle in Helsingør.
Opposition politicians were always suspicious of kings, and quick to sniff out ‘secret influence’, as it was called. Amazingly, George III’s preparations for war with Denmark were kept hidden: the Danish government backed down when it heard of them and agreed to release his sister, their queen. The existence of the royal prerogatives, however, particularly in the domestic sphere, meant that monarchs could exert pressure on governments and, behind the scenes, favour particular politicians. Any Prince of Wales, setting himself up in opposition to his father, could do the same, making promises of future appointments and power. Politics then became a battleground on which family quarrels could be played out in public gestures.
Most of the time the king, who held the prerogative powers, had the upper hand, though the Prince of Wales could make his life very uncomfortable. Not surprisingly, given his low estimation of his eldest son, George III was keen to impose his authority as far as he could upon him, setting out several unwritten codes of behaviour that should accompany the Prince of Wales’s majority and independence. First and most important, although the prince was of necessity allowed his own choice of companions, his own way of life and his own views, he should not stray so far into any political coterie as to threaten the king’s government or the political stability of the nation. Second, he should stay within his income. Third, he should take care not to make himself a laughing stock or such an object of satire that the status of the monarchy was compromised or diminished.
To this list the king added three things that were absolutely forbidden. The prince could not travel abroad without the king’s permission. He was forbidden from taking any active military role. Finally, he could not, under the terms of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, marry without the king’s permission before the age of twenty-five, or marry a divorced woman or a Roman Catholic, ever.
Already set against everything that his father stood for, the newly independent prince now had the means to defy him. In the decade between his coming of age and the outbreak of war with France in 1793, he flouted all the rules the king laid down, except that he was never able to get permission either to leave the country or to serve in any active military role, despite repeated attempts to do both. Even by Hanoverian standards, his rebellion was spectacular, and it was played out with a concomitant absence of affection and goodwill on both sides.
Long before he moved to Carlton House, the prince had discovered the pleasures of conviviality and cards (though he professed to like only games of chance), and found a ready abetter in his cheerful and dissolute uncle, Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland. Estranged from the king since his secret marriage to a rakish widow, Mrs Horton, Cumberland set up a slapdash household in Cumberland House in Pall Mall. In Cumberland House, the Prince of Wales was able to get drunk, meet actresses and sing bawdy songs. Pretty soon he found a circle of companions who not only led him cheerfully into all sorts of fun, but also introduced him to politics. So now that he had a household of his own, the prince was able to add to his father’s discomfort by setting himself up in political opposition.
Inevitably the prince gravitated towards just those politicians that George III disliked most, the set of radical Whigs and their supporters. These Whigs noisily sided with the American colonists in the Revolutionary War, attacked the crown at every opportunity, sought to limit the royal prerogatives and appealed for support directly to under-represented and restless urban voters. Their undisputed leader was the brilliant, charismatic and corpulent Charles James Fox, who had burst on to the political scene by dazzling the House of Commons with his eloquence when first elected an MP in 1768 at the age of nineteen.
The prince was entranced by Fox and in the early 1780s enthusiastically joined his friends and drinking companions in Brooks’s Club, at Newmarket and at Fox’s grimy lodgings in St James’s Street, where Fox entertained in a state of dishevelled undress, his chin unshaven and his hairy chest prominent beneath an old and dirty nightgown. Fox was more than a brilliant raconteur. He had deeply held beliefs in social and religious tolerance and political amelioration; but his political recklessness scuppered his chances of effecting real change. By 1784 his lack of strategic judgement had condemned him to a life on the backbenches and a role as a figurehead for such causes as the abolition of slavery, religious toleration and the extension of the franchise, which carried immense importance in the long term but were beyond the daily power struggles in the Houses of Parliament.
Fox was less a rebel than someone who had no interest in convention, protocol or rank. He ended his life in a modest suburban villa, having refused to take a title, content simply to be himself. He married a courtesan of obscure origins, Elizabeth Armitstead, and retired without rancour to a life of cricket, reading and writing bits and pieces of history. In time, it would become obvious that Fox and the prince had little in common, but in the early 1780s they were united in their wish to taunt and discomfort both the king and the deeply unpopular government of Lord North, which in the eyes of many was intent on prolonging the pointless, wrong and destructive war in America.
Opposition politicians, with Fox prominent among them, energetically prosecuted the idea of the king’s baleful influence on government and sought to advertise it in increasingly personal attacks. In
1780, at the height of the American Revolutionary War, the opposition launched a demand for greater scrutiny of crown pensions that were paid from the public coffers. This lightly veiled attack on the king allowed the MP John Dunning to bring the famous motion on 6 April that ‘the influence of the crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished’.
The king took all this badly, and his sense of outrage increased after the surrender of the British army at Yorktown in October 1781 and the consequent fall of Lord North’s government five months later. As the war dragged on and seamen and soldiers continued to die, the king’s intransigence drew more and more opprobrium and his sense of persecution grew. In the turmoil after Lord North’s resignation, when two administrations came and went in as many years, George III was finally forced to accept three successive governments in which Fox held prominent office, to the delight of the Prince of Wales. Peace was concluded with America in 1783. The king was humiliated and miserable. He even considered abdicating and retiring to Hanover, where he thought his subjects would be more grateful and deferential than either the Americans or his brothers and his sons.
Given the king’s discomfort and deep unpopularity, a triumphant Prince of Wales might have thought that he had finally got the better of his father. Unexpectedly, however, events began to move the king’s way. In 1784 the coalition government in which Fox was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs was forced out of office. Fox was on the backbenches again, and was to remain there for almost two decades. The king appointed a new prime minister, the unforthcoming and austere William Pitt (the Younger), who stayed in power, with only a single break, until 1806.
With Fox out of office, Carlton House became more a louche palace of excess and filial rebellion than a truly threatening reversionary centre of power. Relations between the king and his heir, however, were as bad as ever. George III was damning about his son’s extravagance. The prince, who had been spending vast sums that he did not have on the remodelling and decoration of Carlton House and its gardens, despised his father’s frugality, writing: ‘the King is grown so stingy with regard to himself [that] he will hardly allow himself 3 coats in a year.’16 The king took the moral high ground, telling the prince loftily that he was merely ‘an affectionate father trying to save his son from perdition’.17 This tone further alienated the prince, who complained to his absent brother Frederick in the summer of 1784: ‘his behaviour is so excessively unkind [that] there are moments when I can hardly ever put up with it. Sometimes not speaking to me when he sees me for three weeks together, & hardly ever at Court, speaking to people on each side of me & then missing me, & then if he does honour me with a word, ’tis either merely, “’tis very hot or very cold”.’18
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